1

The following example uses the acronym for Transportation Rail Specialist - Explosives (TRS-E).

Is the plural (TRSs-E) or (TRS-Es)?

Sven Yargs
  • 163,267
npanuz
  • 19
  • Not answering the question, but shouldn't 'Rail' be 'Security'? (And 'TSS-E'?) – Řídící Aug 08 '16 at 18:02
  • I'm familiar with 'FOHFs' where this means 'funds-of-hedge-funds' (the singular being 'fund-of-hedge-funds'). This would be evidence for 'TRS-Es', although 'FOHF' is not a hyphenated acronym. – Řídící Aug 08 '16 at 18:05
  • I remember in school our teacher referred to students with CCNA-S certificates as the "CCNA-Ss". ex: "CCNA-Ss, you're with the CCNPs today"... but I can't say whether that's correct or not. – Othya Aug 08 '16 at 18:45
  • @Scott Good sleuthing. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 08 '16 at 23:14

1 Answers1

1

The most sensible approach, I think, is to put the -s at the end of the acronym/initialism that it pluralizes. Punctuation aside, I see no essential difference between "Transportation Rail Specialist - Explosives (TRS-E)" and "Transportation Rail Specialist for Explosives (TRSE)"—and I assume that you would not argue in favor of "TRSsE" as the plural form of "TRSE."

Bryan Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage, fourth edition (2016) has a useful comment with regard to assigning plurals to initialisms such as POW and WMD:

As with POW and WMD, even if the first word is the main noun in the spelled-out form (prisoner of war, weapon of mass destruction), and the spelled out version would pluralize that noun (prisoners of war, weapons of mass destruction), the abbreviated plural is nevertheless formed with -s at the end of the abbreviation (POWs, WMDs). A few writers mistakenly use the singular form as if the plural form were internally understood—e.g.: "With it comes the end, I hope, of the hoopla and parades of the three POW {read POWs} that wandered aimlessly into enemy territory and were taken prisoner for a few days." [Citation omitted.]

Garner is principally concerned here with what he considers the error of dropping the -s altogether when the whole word that would have been pluralized if the phrase had been rendered in full corresponds to a letter in the initialism other than the final one. But Garner's narrow focus on that particular issue strongly suggests that very few writers have been inclined to render the plurals of POW and WMD as, respectively, PsOW and WsMD.

The inclusion of a hyphen in the initialism TRS-E doesn't alter the fundamental reasonableness of the idea that the -s used to pluralize an initialism should follow the last letter of the initialism, and that the initialism in that case—whether rendered as TRS-E or as TRSE—ends at the E, not the S.

Sven Yargs
  • 163,267